Tsunami Memorial, Levitated MassTwo Sculptures for Awe, July 2011True to its spirit of transmitting, OBSART presents a film by the photographer Luke Hayes. This is an exceptional document hosted on Dezeen that you will be able to watch after reading this text (orange link). It recounts the entire process of the building of the memorial, created in the heart of London last summer, for the British victims of the 2004 tsunami that swept the coasts of the Indian Ocean.

You wonder what does this memorial has to do with Land Art? You are right, particularly in view of the use and abuse of this artistic designation currently in vogue, but there is really one. This film even adds one more brick to our article published the day before yesterday, and somehow, it amplifies the transatlantic action that we imagined in July 2011.

Indeed, it appears to us that this 117-ton rock transportation by Courcelle, from Plo Quarry in France to the Natural History Museum of London, carried out for ten days, movingly echoes the transportation in the United States of Michael Heizer’s 340-ton rock by Emmert International, from Stone Valley Quarry (Jurupa Valley) to LACMA (Los Angeles), scheduled to last some ten days...

When? “God only knows” would probably respond Michael Heizer. As for our “international Perray Regis”, he stands ready to perform his symbolic action, more than ever ready to move its 340 grams of dust coming from the vault of the Chartres Cathedral, for some ten days, while his precious cargo quietly wait for the green light in its archival storage bag.

Even more moving, after a long discussion with Michael Minor – an international expert in mining commissioned by Barbara Cohen (Miller Druck) to hunt out the rock required by the architects of the project (Carmody & Groarke) – we learned that the granite from Plo Quarry was used to build another church, the Sagrada Família [1]. So, it is difficult not to think about the famous statement by Heizer:

“It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe. Small works are said to do this but it is not my experience. Immense, architecturally sized sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere. Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience, I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended. (...) I think that large sculptures produced in the '60s and '70s by a number of artists were reminiscent of the time when societies were committed to the construction of massive, significant works of art.” [2]

OBSART, 14/02/12

[updated: 23/02/12][1] Masterpiece by Antoni Gaudí, unfinished to this day despite 130 years of work,Sagrada Familia (1882...)has survived the death of the Spanish architect in the same way as City (1972...) will probably survive that of the American artist.[2] in Julia Brown, Michael Heizer:
Sculpture in Reverse, Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984, p.
33.

Watch the FilmThanks to :-Jean-Pierre Plo (director ofPlo Quarry) for his patient listening andkind proposal to connect us with“the man who cantell you everything aboutthis project,”according to his own words.- Michel Minor (Quarry director from 1974 to 2005 now an international expert in mining) for his warm welcome and the mine of information he provided to us (maps, technical data, story of the project, photos...). He was the representative in France of Barbara Cohen (director of Miller Druck, a U.S. multinational that provides services in connection with the design and execution of natural stone). His mission was to find a quarry that can provide a 4 x 4 x 4-meter block with faces to cut that he has looked for in Spain, Italy, Brittany, Finland, Norway, Portugal and South Africa, and finally hunted out in southern France (Saint-Salvy-de-la-Balme, Tarn), in the quarry run by Plo's brothers. He was consulted on the extraction method, finishing and engraving works as well as the handling and transporting of the block (including significant restraints due to the crossing of two countries with specific laws, or the schedule since an unmovable deadline has been set in higher spheres).